More than ever we need organizations to step up their environmental commitments and stewardship. This requires extensive goal setting, research, improvement and measurement, and verification. Though some believe environmental performance hurts business, many are finding it can actually boost the profitability, stock performance, and brand.

I remember when we founded the U.S. Green Building Council and our LEED Green Building Rating System back in the early 90s, some of our board members only wanted us to work with activist NGOs and avoid large corporations at our table. They were leery of the heavy hand of business and that they’d try to control our nascent non-profit and extinguish our lofty goals.

Well, thankfully we didn’t adhere to that call and remained open to both sides to join us. One of the world’s biggest corporations actually turned out to support us the most of almost any other. United Technologies [known as UTC] not only contributed Rick Fedrizzi, our founding Chairman, and long-term CEO but provided decades of voluntary assistance, financial contributions, and advancement of our professionalism and credibility into the marketplace.

Today’s Regen360 iTunes podcast show features an interview with UTC’s Chief Sustainability Officer, John Mandyck. John also chairs the Corporate Advisory Board for the World Green Building Council, which I founded in 2002. John and I spent interesting times together as we worked to help foster the formation and growth of the China, Russia and India Green Building Councils.

In our conversation, John informs us about UTC’s significant emphasis on the importance and benefit of adopting a deep sustainability program. UTC is not only a global leader in aerospace, food refrigeration, and commercial buildings but also environmental ingenuity and performance. We learn about UTC’s sponsorship of a fascinating indoor air quality research project with Harvard University and John’s book Food Foolish.

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Praise For David Gottfried

"Our future depends on sustainability...David Gottfried's pioneering work is proof that we can do it..."

— President Bill Clinton

"I recently heard you speak at Design Green Cincinnati. Your story has given me confidence and patience to stay persistent, knowing that making a difference takes time."

— Shawn Hesse, Leed AP Architecture, Bayer Becker

"Martha Graham, the great dancer and choreographer, once described the creative process as "blessed unrest." The same could be said for David Gottfried. Anyone who knows David can feel the energy. It is a toe-tapping, eye-flashing kinetic that takes on any challenge. What he took on was the building industry and its relationship to living systems. He founded and helped build the most important green trade organization in the world. There is virtually no second place. No organization has had a bigger impact on the environment than this one..."

— Paul Hawken, Author, Ecology of Commerce

"David Gottfried gave one of the most moving and inspirational talks to the Leadership Summit on Sustainable Design in San Francisco and he was a featured speaker with Dan Pink not so very long ago in Toronto. I think you will enjoy him: good sense of humor, relaxed, articulate, passionate, youthful. He has a fresh message."

— James P. Cramer, Chairman & Principal, The Greenway Group

"I enjoyed your presentation. Your honesty about the setbacks and your determination to proceed were both very inspiring."

— Kurt Lavenson, Owner & Principal, Lavenson Design

"Thank you so much for doing the closing keynote for this year's Chapter Forum [at Greenbuild Philadelphia]. You physically and mentally brought the energy level up, and inspired our community like only you can do."

— Margo Street, LEED Green Associate Manager, Community Advancement, U.S. Green Building Council

David is a person who's simply wired differently than most others. His sense of right and wrong is like forged steel. His understanding of a holistic approach to problem solving, creating and human wellness is something special. And his compassion for his fellow humans and those generations yet conceived is a life force about which I stand transfixed in some childlike combination of reverence and awe.

— Rick Fedrizzi

What I love about what you've done is to return people back to a way of thinking that is in sympathy with the world instead of standing on top of the world.

— David Adjaye

I just wanted to drop you a note to say how much I am enjoying your podcasts--really informative and really inspiring!